BEDA #14: Cowards

This week JezuzFreek777 got his YouTube account suspended, due to false flagging. For those of you YouTube n00bs out there, if a YouTube video violates YouTube terms of service, (which basically say, don’t encourage or show violence, don’t upload porn, and don’t, DON’T use copyrighted materials) any viewer can anonymously “flag” the video, which is supposed to mean that a notification gets sent to YouTube and they review the video and see if it should stay up. Normally what actually happens is that if a video gets flagged enough, YouTube takes it down without looking at it, or warning the owner of the video. If enough of one users videos get flagged, their account gets suspended or terminated.

If you couldn’t tell, JezuzFreek is, well, a Jesus freak. He’s a YouTube Christian who makes videos talking about the Bible. The YouTube religious scene,as you can probably imagine, is well, heated. And JezuzFreek has a lot of enemies. Thusly people decided that they didn’t want to allow him a platform to speak from anymore, and flagged his videos.

The thing I can’t understand is this: How does a person make the connection between disagreeing with what a person has to say, and then wanting to take away their right to speak? Under what rationale is that the logical “next step” in the thinking process? Please, let me know what you think. And if you say something I don’t like, I promise that I won’t delete your comment.

Like this:

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For many, perhaps most, of us, control is the most important issue of all. When we think we are right and someone else is wrong, we want more than anything for our opinion to rule. The closer the topic is to “axiom” the more important to us it is that our opinion triumphs.

If, for whatever reason, we cannot change the other person’s opinion–to convert him/her to our axiom–then the next best method of control is to silence him/her. There are many, many techniques for doing that, beginning with more emotional emphasis in your own presentation, including fallacious reasoning, consciously utilizing falsehoods, resorting to insults and]or threats, and, as appears to be the case here, exercising or enlisting authority and/or violence to muzzle the opposition.

Religious belief is very much at the heart of axiomatic belief, and anti-religious beliefs are precisely the same things as religious ones. The most difficult position anyone can hold relative to the question of “what’s it all about” is the truly agnostic acceptance of our inability to answer that question at all.

Most who claim to be agnostics are actually atheists. Unfortunately, this is so common that many no longer realize the distinction.

I think if a majority of people have invested time and heart into a certain view point or belief, they will be defensive when someone speaks against it or shows a different view point. It’s these people on the defense that freedom of speech is directed towards. Freedom of speech confronts people stuck on one set of beliefs. Freedom of speech challenges you to question your own values and beliefs. Nobody likes that. JesusFreak is the minority challenging your beliefs.

Whoa! Children that think!
I’ve gotten in this mindset before…being so sure that your dearly held belief is true you become enraged that ANYONE could doubt or hold an opposing opinion and they should be flagged (youTube), beaten up, bombed or closed down in any fashion possible (the KKK, suicide bombers and Dodgers fans (just checking to see if you’re reading, Evan) come to mind).

An unfortunate emotion that if not carefully checked leads to stupid violence, turmoil and an unpeaceful world.